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What Are They?

Blacklisting and whitelisting are two different ways of being able to filter specific types of data, so that employees are only able to access the necessary resources to do their work and stay safe. These tools are used for access control within the workplace and can be amended at any time.

The type you should use for your business will depend on a variety of factors; including, your organisational and personal needs regarding security and convenience. To ensure you make an informed decision about the right one for your business, we will explain them both.

Whitelisting

Whitelisting is setting rules regarding what a staff member is allowed to access or with who they can communicate with. Whitelisting can be used for, data, systems, resources, or recipients and the rules can be updated at any time. This means that if there is anything or anyone which is not included within the whitelist then staff will be blocked from accessing or talking to them.

The system administrator will be able to provide specific access to each user therefore you can set rules for each individual employee rather than the whole company. Whilst whitelisting is more secure compared to blacklisting, it can take the administrator a lot more time to set this up for each user. You are able to use third-party whitelisting services for your business which can make this process easier.

An example of whitelisting within an organisation is to set a rule so that employees can only send and receive emails from the company domain, IP addresses or other relevant characteristics. Meaning they can’t communicate with anyone outside of the workplace using their emails.

Advantages

• It creates a higher level of security within the business because there is a verification and authentication process
• It provides specific and limited access
• The National Institute of Standards and Technology say whitelisting is the best option for high-security settings

Disadvantages

• It can be difficult and time-consuming to manage a large number of users
• Identities must be verified to ensure the user has been whitelisted

Blacklisting

Blacklisting, on the other hand, is setting rules regarding what staff members are blocked from accessing or who they can communicate to within the workplace. It works by creating a list of blocked or disapproved resources, users or systems. It is worth noting that blacklisting is not as secure as whitelisting because it gives employees a bigger range of resources to access and users to communicate with.

This will take less time for the system administrator to complete compared to whitelisting and is much simpler to set up. Backlisting works by checking if there is a match to a blacklisted resource or entity and then grating the user access if it is okay to do so. Unlike whitelisting you do not need to check the identity of every user which means it is much easier to navigate.

An example of this is you can create blacklisting rules for certain email addresses for the business, which means everyone in the business will be blocked from receiving or sending emails to those addresses. Whilst this will be helpful, it won’t block the employees from any other strange emails from other email addresses.

Advantages

Provides easy access to resources for employees because they have a bigger range of sources and whom they can communicate with

• It is much simpler and quicker than whitelisting because you don’t have to check the identity of every user

Disadvantages

• It can only protect your business from threats you have identified
• Blacklists have been known to be exploited by malware which has been designed to avoid detection from blacklists

If you would like further guidance and advice regarding which would be the most suitable for your business. Contact us today:

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